Come in Spinners

When the debate ends, the spin begins. And there is a special room for it.
Fortunately, on the drizzling, cold New Hampshire night, the Spin Room was in the building right beside the media's giant File Room. We just had to scuttle past a couple of rain-protected State Troopers and into the bright lights of spin. It was another vast, high-ceilinged Saint Anselm indoor sporting arena of some sort. But the sport was spin - with keen volunteers gathered around towers bearing the names of the candidates, all of tem holding signs aloft. These identified the candidates' spin doctors. Yes. True story. The media was invited to get the spin. Now, we all know that spin is PR - so this struck me as a bizarre ritual for journalists - go interview the PR people? Isn't that what we want to avoid? To be fair, these good news-bearers were campaign strategists, pollsters and, well, important people had endorsed a candidate.

Of course it was hoped that the candidates themselves would appear in the Spin Room before the night was over - but for some time they would be engaged in post-mortem interviews back in the debate hall which was some distance away. So the media swarmed around the Spin Room earnestly interviewing the spinsters.

They gathered in tight clutches, notepads and tape recorders to the fore, hanging on every word. Every grouping attracted curious rivals - anxious not to miss a scoop. I simply couldn't see this as scoop territory, but I played along.

Bruce recognised the very powerful political advisor and Hillary confidant Mandy Grunwald so I zeroed in. I liked the look of her, as it happens - but I was not about to make her like me. I'd decided to go for the nitty-gritty, the thing which is worrying us most of all in the Hillary Clinton candidacy - the "baggage".
Thus did I enumerate the Bill baggage, the 2002 vote for the War on Iraq baggage, the fact that American voters think she is too ambitious baggage and the fact that she is a woman baggage, asking Grunwald if America could ever let go of this, since every time I mentioned my preference for Hillary, people responded with a baggage agenda.
Grunwald gave me something of a withering look and said: "In case you hadn't noticed, she is ahead."

Yes, I had noticed, but there was a long way to go and media corrosion applied to baggage in American politics presented a need for constant defence. Could Hillary surmount the baggage over the distance? How hard was it?
Grunwald, her eyes raking the room for someone or something, told me that Hillary is definitely the most able candidate for the job, the most experienced and best and that, despite baggage, the polls were going strongly her way.
But what of the national sexism, what about America voting for a woman?
Here her spin ended.
"We shall just have to wait and see," she sighed.
I left it at that.
There really is nothing left to say. Indeed, there is a long way to go before the NH primary vote in January. Hillary has been working very hard in the state and I do believe she has won many hearts and minds. But there could so easily be a slipup. John Edwards lost ground with his $400 haircut. As the Washington blogger told me when we swapped notes, Edwards is now irreparably handicapped by that extravagance. He is a joke. Just as John Kerry in 2004 was doomed from the moment the media labelled him "Flip Flop". It only takes one little thing in this game.
The up side is that all the Democratic candidates are good - a quality of politician of which we could only dream in Australia.
And, unlike in Australia, they are accountable to the voters - not picked for leadership in some backroom, faction-driven party in-deal.


Clearly the Spin Room media was in for the long haul, waiting for candidates to turn up. They milled and jostled, killed time with interviews and photographs that will never see the light of day and jealously watched the CNN post debate interviews on a giant TV screen.


Bruce and I figured we could watch them more comfortably at home - and set off into the night drizzle, past the rows of trucks topped by satellite dishes, giant high-tech OB vans, damp outdoor reportage tents and the big, shiny CNN Express bus, parked in a dazzle of floodlights on one of the campus lawns.

Indeed, we were able to catch up on the television coverage at home and, heavens above, who was that looking earnest in the midst of the Spin Room throng? 'Twas me.

Songs of praise and mutters of dissent

The hunt is on for a Hillary song.
I've noticed the prominence of music at all the candidates' major events - not always liking what I heard. In the Hillary case, it would seem to be because the campaign theme song has yet to be chosen.
Now, as the action revs up, the time has come.
It's tricker than one may think. One needs something that falls between familiar popular song and an anthem. Something that creates the right mood and delivers the right message. And, bloody hell, it turns out to be a can of worms - or so I am thinking now I have listened to the selection thus far chosen for the Hillary Clinton campaign. The campaign has asked us all to vote and, if we don't like the choices, to suggest something else.
One by one, I eliminated the nine proposed songs - one was too dirge-like, one sounded like a lesbian love song, one did not sound positive enough, one sounded too girlie...
So, if I don't like them, I have to think of something else. OK. So I have surfed around and listened to things I thought would be good options and, guess what, none of my ideas is perfect either!
I'll just have to wait and see what other supporters come up with.

Meanwhile, we await the forthcoming Democrat Debate in New Hampshire. It is being hosted by CNN and the Union Leader newspaper in Manchester - rather a good paper, I have noted, with a terrific web presence. Getting hold of tickets to the debate is not easy. They are very strictly rationed and one has to apply by email, giving personal details which include date of birth. Then one has to wait to see if one is accepted. This makes me very tense indeed.

Methinks New Hampshire also is getting a bit tense. The other US states are doing their best to close in and undermine its first primary status. We've had the date changes from the other states with Florida pushing hard to turn the presidential candidate campaign into a rush, to squeeze up those dates and force New Hampshire back into 2007. Now we have Associated Press (the Australian version of which I once worked for) and its analysis of the America census statistics to show that NH is not the perfect archetypal American state. It does not have a "national average" demographic. AP says that Illinois is the average state. It also is a huge state. Too intensely populated for the sort of hands-on intensity of the NH political activity.
The criticism of NH is that it does not have the diversity of population, the percentage of blacks. But what it does have is a political tradition and a population geared to undertake the responsibility of scrutinising each and every candidate as a state mission and a national obligation. Of course this is not average!